


Best Idea You've Ever Had

by hunters_retreat



Series: Further Interruptions [46]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-10 04:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21471667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunters_retreat/pseuds/hunters_retreat
Summary: “I missed you, Gold,” he confessed.Ed let out a sigh as he pulled Roy tighter against his body.  “I missed you too, Bastard.  I love you, you know that, right?”Roy looked up at him and brushed a stray hair from Ed’s face.  “I do.  You loving me was never something I questioned, Ed.  I still doubt that I deserve it though.”
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, Mei Chan | May Chang/Alphonse Elric
Series: Further Interruptions [46]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1095915
Comments: 10
Kudos: 142





	Best Idea You've Ever Had

  
Ed laid Fumi down to sleep in her crib and he let out a deep breath. Tonight he wouldn’t have minded if she’d taken hours to sleep. He’d have willingly held her in his arms all night if it meant he could avoid what came next. He thought about going to their bedroom and getting ready for bed, but it was still early and if he wasn’t going to deal with his runaway husband, he still had work to do tonight. 

He didn’t know how to breach the distance that had come between him and Roy, so instead of heading down to the living room where he knew Roy was waiting for him, he went to the study and pulled out the research he’d been working on.

It wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was promising. The research had been found by the Investigations team when they’d arrested a rogue alchemist. It wasn’t Ed’s specialty and it bordered on alkahestry, so he thought he might show it to his brother tomorrow. If his brother was willing to look at it. He’d tried earlier and all Alphonse would talk about was Roy. 

The thing about that was that Ed knew how good a life he had. He didn’t question it. He loved his husband and was loved equally in return. He had an amazing baby girl to hold in his arms and the twins were brilliant. He had the best brother in the world. He had a job that let him be home with his kids and husband and still contribute to the alchemy world in a meaningful way. There wasn’t a thing he would change about his life.

It was why every night, when Roy put his uniform on and headed back to the office, Ed asked him to stay. Sure, Roy had plenty of work to do, but that wasn’t why he returned and they both knew it. Even when Roy had so much on his plate that he didn’t have a choice about working terribly long hours, he’d come home every night so that he could at least hold his husband in his arms. This was deliberate separation and it was killing Ed. 

He didn’t know how to change things though. He’d tried the direct route and just asked him. He’d yelled. He’d fought and screamed. He’d begged. He’d even tried to seduce his husband back to their bed. Nothing worked. His husband was infuriatingly stubborn and once something stuck in his moral compass, nothing could change it. 

It was why he was the man he was today. It was why he was the youngest Fuhrer in Amestrian history and the first to change their bloodstained history into something that promised peace. It was why Ed was at wit’s end and already writing tonight off as one more night of begging Roy not to go and being left alone, with just Fumi tonight to keep him company.

He wasn’t sure how long he was staring at the notes before a glass of amber liquid was set in front of him. He looked up to find Roy standing on the other side of the desk. 

“You looked tense. Seemed like you could use a drink,” he offered. 

Ed thought about refusing, but the absence of a matching cup in his husband’s hands spoke worlds about where his mind was tonight. He took a sip instead, grateful for the respite, even if it was for a few moments.

“Can I help you with anything?” Roy asked.

Ed shook his head. “No. The work isn’t hard. I just can’t seem to concentrate on it. I wonder why that could be,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Roy moved away from the desk and took a seat on the chaise lounge across from him. It was unfair, because he could never look at Roy sitting there and not want to crawl into his lap until they were both sweaty and sated, but he knew better than to think it was a calculated move on Roy’s part. Not tonight. Not with so much between them right now. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Fullmetal,” Roy answered softly. 

He was still distancing himself from Ed, even by name, and he wanted to throw something at him, but he kept his temper. The last thing he needed to give Roy was a reason to walk out tonight when Alphonse had taken the twins so they could talk this out.

“I want to know why loving you now isn’t enough.”

Roy’s eyes closed and Ed clenched his fists to keep from getting up and offering comfort to the man. 

“Because it never was,” Roy answered, his voice dark and thick with tears. “Because you didn’t love me, Ed. You loved this idea of a husband and family and you put me in the staring role because Tishy told you I was the one.”

“Why do you believe that what she said was the only reason I loved you? When have I ever believed in fate or destiny?”

“Then what would have happened, Ed? Tell me that. How did we ever happen, if Tishy hadn’t interfered?”

“You know what, okay,” Ed huffed. “Let’s play this game. What would have happened. What would have happened, Roy, if I hadn’t shown up that night? Would you even be alive?”

“I wasn’t going to kill myself with a bottle that night, Ed,” Roy said firmly. Ed wasn’t so sure he believed him, but he’d let Roy get away with it. 

“So the hospital then. Hawkeye would have come to find you that night or the next morning and she’d have taken you to the hospital when you wouldn’t wake. The team would cover your ass, but we’d have all been told what happened. The truth, because Hawkeye would want everyone to keep an eye on your drunk ass back then if she’d realized just how bad it was.”

Roy frowned at him, but he didn’t negate the words either so Ed continued. “Everyone else would have been working diligently to keep you from being alone and drinking and keeping your reputation in tact, but I’d have confronted you. Especially back then.”

“I’d have kicked your ass out of the office and that would have been the end of it.”

“You think that would have been the end of it? If you’d have kicked me out of the office I would have followed you home that night, where you couldn’t kick me out.”

“And what? You think I would have fucked you that night? Started the downward spiral of using you like I did? You might not realize this, Ed, but it took a while for me to trust you enough to ask you to come over.”

“I’d have made the offer. The same offer I made in your office that day. Not knowing about Tishy, not knowing about anything else, I’d have told you to call me. And you would have because you made that choice without her.”

“You weren’t interested in me, Ed. No matter if I called or not, you wouldn't have been interested in where our relationship went if she hadn’t told you.”

“Do you think I was blind, Roy? I might not have wanted to jump into bed with you that night, but it’s impossible not to see how stupidly attractive you are. Especially back then when you were single and every officer in the building lined up to have a chance with you.”

“Ed-”

“No. You know I would have made the same offer, Roy. And I know you would have called me. Would it have happened the same way? You tell me. As far as I know, I never did anything to make you think I was interested in a relationship with you, or any man. So why did you make that move?”

“Because I needed …” Roy stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. “You said it was okay to need someone. You were always so beautiful, Ed, and you never played it against people and you never looked down on me for the way I did. I played every card in my arsenal but you never talked behind my back and you never put up with anyone else doing it either. I trusted you to keep me sane and help me see my way through.”

“And I trusted you because you were the only one who understood me. And you trusted me because I was the only one you could trust with this part of yourself.”

“Ed-”

“You think it was Tishy’s words that made me love you, Bastard? You were stupidly handsome. You were arrogant and brash and underhanded and downright sneaky sometimes. But you also made Elysia squeal whenever she saw her Uncle Roy coming to visit. You kept my brother safe and helped me try to find a way to fix what I’d messed up. You didn’t love me back then, but you did it because you were a decent man. I loved you because you warned me that this was going to end bad, even when you needed to me to be there. I loved you because you didn’t send me away after we had sex. You kept me, you held me, and you believed I was strong enough to protect you. I was just an alchemist without my alchemy and uncertain in where I fit in the world, but you still believed in me. You called me your Gold.

I loved you because you twined our fingers together when we made love and you were playful and even if you didn’t love me, you made me feel like you adored me. And I know you did. It was nothing Tishy did. It was you. And when I came back to Amestris it because Armstrong needed me here. And when I went back to your bed, it was because you won me back over coffee and dinner and a patience I didn’t know you could possibly show me. You won me back. Not words of an imaginary daughter I no longer believed in. Not a future dream that I had barely even had time to grasp at. You, with a single letter sent when I know you wanted to send hundreds. You, with ridiculous pick up lines and cheesy romantic gestures that you knew were so over the top I’d thrash every one of them but that made me laugh anyway.

You, because you smiled at me, real and honest and made me see that after everything else, you had come to love me. You dealt with all your bullshit and you made space for me in your life. I fell in love with you because no one has ever looked at my scars and thought them a wonder or a testament to who I am, except you.”

“Ed, stop.”

Ed stared at his husband and he felt himself deflate. He didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t know how to fix this thing between them. 

“I need an honest answer to this question, Ed. I need you to think back and be honest. The night before I was abducted we went to dinner. We were at a good place, as friends back then, just like you had said you wanted. If I had asked you, then, if you would go on a date with me, would you have said yes?”

Ed closed his eyes because he could see with crystal clarity then. He knew his husband’s heartache and he could see how each decision and choice they’d made could be twisted in the mind of the man he loved so much. Because while Roy was arrogant and cocky, that facade covered a man who had wrestled with demons and found himself on the wrong end too many times. He needed Ed’s love to ground him and he needed his family to remind him on the hard days that there was something good to fight for.

But Roy had never learned to accept that Ed needed him back just as much. 

Ed took a deep breath as he moved around the desk to kneel in front of Roy. He took his husband’s hands in his and waited for Roy to look at him. “Roy, I said yes to you before that, in that hotel room in East City.”

“That was spur of the moment. Afterward, you said you wanted to be friends.”

“I didn’t say that was all I wanted. I just wanted to get to know you better before anything else happened, because we always rush into everything head first. Both of us. The night before you got abducted I damn near asked you to stay. And I spent three months wishing I had because then you’d have been with me instead of …” he sighed. “Yes, Roy. I would have said yes to a date with you. Though to be fair, you never actually stopped flirting with me during that month anyway.”

“I did not flirt with you. I respected your wishes.”

“You can’t stop flirting. It would be like you not breathing.”

“Ed, I was a perfect gentleman.”

“You were,” Ed agreed. “Much to my surprise at the time. The fact that you were, and still are, is one of the reasons I love you.”

“Even if I’m the biggest sap in all of Amestris?” Roy asked.

Ed had said it many times and he would still stand by it. “Thankfully you also have a sense of humor or me burning your flowers would have gotten old fast,” Ed teased. 

He felt it then, something shifting in the air between them. The banter was ending as quickly as it had begun and he wasn’t willing to lose it so fast. He pulled himself up to straddle Roy’s hips, settling on his lap with his hands over his shoulders.

“I love you, Bastard. I loved you back then for the man you were, the man you wanted to be, and the things you needed to do in this world. I love you now because you still keep doing them. You are the best person I know. Sap and all.”

Roy pulled him close and Ed turned his head slightly, to feel Roy’s nose press to the skin just behind his ear. “Tell me to stay,” Roy said softly. “Tell me you need me here.”

Ed pulled back just enough to stare into his husband’s eyes. “Don’t you dare fucking walk out that door tonight,” he said, just as he pulled him close and kissed him deeply. He felt Roy’s arms around his waist, pulling him tight. It was everything he needed tonight, everything he’d needed for the last two months. 

They were crazy. He knew that. No one in their right minds would ever have thought that they could survive a relationship together, let alone one spanning a decade, with three kids and a fuhrer-ship on top of it all, but nothing made sense when they weren’t together. 

He pulled back from the kiss, and out of his husband’s arms to stand in front of him. He offered Roy a hand. “Stay tonight,” he asked softly. “Don’t make me sleep alone again.”

Roy took his hand and followed Ed back to their bedroom. His eyes never left Ed and as he slowly stripped his husband of his clothes his hands were terribly gentle. They made love until the morning hours, and when Fumi woke, Roy left Ed sleeping in bed to care for her. He called Hawkeye and told her to reschedule all his appointments because he wouldn’t be in today and then followed it up with a phone call to Al, asking him to keep the twins a little longer. 

When he came back to bed, Fumi resting quietly back in her crib, he pulled Ed close and buried his nose in his hair. “I missed you, Gold,” he confessed.

Ed let out a sigh as he pulled Roy tighter against his body. “I missed you too, Bastard. I love you, you know that, right?”

Roy looked up at him and brushed a stray hair from Ed’s face. “I do. You loving me was never something I questioned, Ed. I still doubt that I deserve it though.”

“Neither of us is easy, Roy, we both know that. But no one else gets me the way you do. And I know you feel the same. We both have our scars. We have nightmares and pasts that would make most people run. But we understand each other because we’ve been there. And through so much of it, we’ve been there together. We’re better together, you know. Both of us.”

Roy pulled Ed until he was lying on top of him, long hair blanketing them from the world. “I won’t make this mistake again, Ed,” he confided. “Every night when I walked away, I always knew I’d find my way home to you. I could never let you go, as much as I have tried.”

“Good thing, because I’m not letting you go. Maybe Tishy told me things I shouldn’t have known. Maybe I told you things you shouldn’t have known. But you and I have worked damn hard to make this family work. I don’t care how it happened, Roy. I’m not letting anything tear that apart. Not stubborn husbands. Not stupid rogue alchemists showing up in my living room. Nothing.”

“Good, because I really need your help with something, now that we’ve settled all of that.”

“What is that?” Ed asked as he pressed a soft kiss to his husband’s lips.

“How the hell are we going to deal with time traveling teenage twins?”

“Al.”

“Al?”

“When they hit their teen years we’ll just leave them with Al. Pick them up in Xing when they’re past the trouble making stage.”

“They’re our children, Ed. They will never be past the trouble making stage.”

Ed sighed, then smiled at Roy. “Guess we better enjoy our morning without them then, while we can.”

“Gold, I think that is the best idea you’ve ever had.”


End file.
